MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1983 - Mississippi Years

Building Projects

The house design was based on a small picture from a newspaper. I modified the floor plan making some drawings for the layout of the two-story house. We never had a complete set of drawings. The contractor took my floor plan layout and the picture from the paper and built the house. My specification called for all outside walls to be 2 x 6, as opposed to the standard 2 x 4 construction. The house was to be all electric with separate heat pump A/C units for each of the two stories. Instead of the standard 50-gallon water heater, there were two 40-gallon water heaters, one placed upstairs between the two bathrooms and one downstairs near the kitchen, laundry area, and half-bath. There was a two-car garage with a 16-foot door as a opposed to the standard 14-foot, not directly attached to the house but with a 10-foot covered walkway connecting the two structures. Trees were cleared around the house only to a 25-foot distance. The lot we selected was a corner lot and the house was set 100 feet back from the busier street and 50-feet from the neighborhood street. The busier street was the only street into and out of our 20 home subdivision which was set back from the local country road by about half mile. The neighborhood street went to only 3 other houses.

From then on we spent the summers doing new projects on our wooded acreage out in the country side and traveling back north to visit friends and family. We also started going south to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Gulf Shores is a beach resort area on the east side of Mobile Bay. It became our go to vacation place from then on.